I think there is a quite obvious explanation when comparing the Jan announcement to the JV pull out.
- Hadji was one prospect in the JV - Hadji returned strong results - Other tenements that were thought to contain lots of copper are lower than historical data would inidcate - Upon discovering this, GTE do not want to commit to the exploration costs / timeframe / scale that was originally agreed in the JV based on the poor correlation with historical data
It is my view that GTE want to abandon the original terms of the JV which may have hamstrung them in terms of where and what they could drill. I believe that GTE may want to continue with Hadji but do not want to be stuck drilling exploration cores they dont believe will be successful.
If you subscribe to this thinking, both announcement can be true.
Just remember we are not withdrawing from the JV because Hadji is 'uneconomical', we are withdrawing because the JV as a whole is uneconomical (i.e. drilling pointless cores based on iffy historical data).
my $0.02
GTE Price at posting:
9.4¢ Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
